How Germany was suffocated

For 57 years Germany has been struggling to make amends for its Nazi past and be accepted by its neighbours. But has its desire to avoid discord stifled the nation's public life and prevented much needed reform? On the fourth leg of his European tour, Joe Klein finds a society addled by 'ferocious blandness'

A few weeks ago, Sir Charles Powell told me a story, which he has probably told a thousand times, about visiting Germany with his old boss, Margaret Thatcher. Their host was Helmut Kohl, who took them to his home town of Oggersheim, and to lunch at his favourite bistro and to the cathedral at Speyer, where the first holy Roman emperors - the first pan-Europeans - were buried. At the cathedral, Kohl took Powell aside and said: "It is absolutely crucial that Mrs Thatcher knows that I consider myself a European first and a German second."

Powell and Thatcher returned to their plane. Thatcher kicked off her shoes, leaned back in her chair and said: "Kohl is such a German."

The story says a bit more about Thatcher, perhaps, than it does about Kohl - but it says something about Germany, too. For 57 years, this has been the most admirable of nations. It responded with care, humility and responsibility after the Nazi disgrace (it reserved its martial fervour for the football pitch, and even there was gracious enough to yield the World Cup to England in 1966, a reparation, perhaps, for the blitz). West Germany stood on the front lines of the cold war, steadfast when the Soviets blockaded and then walled Berlin. It reunited graciously, generously with the east (indeed, at an estimated cost of €600bn, a sacrifice that still is having an effect on the domestic economy).

And it has been the most quietly persistent force in the formation of the European Union. Since the second world war, Germany has worked patiently not just to be accepted by its neighbours, but more - to subsume itself in them. It is as if the Germans don't quite trust themselves to be left to their own devices. "I don't know what will become of Germany," Konrad Adenauer once said, "unless we manage to create Europe in time."

Hence Kohl at the cathedral. Indeed, there is something crashingly Teutonic about the mania to become the precise opposite of Hitler's Reich: thoughtful and peaceful and fair and cooperative and just another country. The effort has been extraordinary, it permeates every corner of post-war German culture; it is as if a quiet decision was made, after 1945, to insert Prozac into the water supply. Political correctness rules; political contentiousness exists, but it is frowned upon; consensus is the holy grail. "There is the assumption that if we keep our heads down we're likely to have success," said Dr Christoph Bertram, a national security expert. "And we have had a lot of success doing things that way. I wonder, though, if the time hasn't come for us to take a more active role, especially in Europe. Of course, if you use words like 'leadership', you get pushed out of the room. Joschka Fischer [the German foreign minister] still talks about how fragile our basis of acceptance is."

Consensus is, of course, a natural consequence of a multi-party system, where alliances must be formed; all European countries have powerful elites who quietly organise the social arrangements. But there have been recent upheavals in the political cultures of Italy, France and even the Netherlands; there are great debates about the future taking place all over Europe. In Germany, however, a ferocious blandness has set in. Public life has the congealed quality of a Bavarian Kartoffelsuppe left cooling on the stove overnight. Which leads to this week's questions: has Germany become too nice for its own good? Has it consensualised itself into a coma?

"I think that sensibility is fading," a leading newspaper editor told me. "Look at the recent incidents of anti-semitism." Indeed, there are two contretemps simmering - but either could easily be seen as an example of the enduring power of German political correctness. One concerns a novel called The Death of a Critic by Martin Walser, a roman à clef about a novelist's revenge on a powerful Jewish critic who has assaulted his work. (Walser's own work has been ravaged by Marcel Reich-Ranicki, an aged and celebrated Jewish critic.) The Frankfurter Allgemeine, which was to publish an excerpt, decided the book was too raw and reneged. Needless to say, the book would be a minor scandal in most other countries; in Germany, it has caused grave soul-searching about the revival of certain national "tendencies".

Then there is the Möllemann dispute. Jürgen Möllemann, deputy chairman of the right-of-centre Free Democratic party, a former paratrooper who has been known to skydive into political rallies, recently said that Ariel Sharon's government in Israel and certain members of the German Jewish establishment - he named one, in particular, a journalist named Michael Friedman - were bringing anti-semitism upon themselves by their extreme behaviour. There was an immediate uproar, of course. There were calls for Möllemann's head. The Free Democrats, who have been rising in the polls on a Thatcherite agenda, dithered a bit and then chivvied an apology from Möllemann. Two hours after he apologised, though, Möllemann issued a clarification: the apology didn't apply to Friedman. The notion that Jews bring anti-semitism upon themselves is repulsive, of course - and the possibility that Möllemann is trolling for the votes of German Arabs and native anti-semites is even more so - but the comments themselves are mild compared to the opinions routinely found in European newspapers: the cartoon in La Stampa, for example, of the baby Jesus in a manger surrounded by Israeli tanks.

The German sensitivity to anti-semitic nuance can't be gainsaid...or can it? In both cases, there is an unhealthy edge of panic - the assumption that if the genie gets out of the bottle there will be jackboots on the Rhine before you can sieg heil. But there are consequences to such skittishness, to a public debate where only the alleged victims are allowed to speak freely. Paul Spiegel, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the Möllemann affair "the biggest insult uttered by a party in the federal republic since the Holocaust". Yet no one was able to say, "Paul, put a lid on it," for fear of being accused of anti-Jewish sentiments themselves. I suspect the role of national conscience is not a long-term winner for Germany's Jews, any more than the role of national scourge was.

There is another consequence: this frantic German thoughtfulness has led to a society so well padded that no one is willing to take a risk, a society where no one feels comfortable asserting herself. The muffled public debate bores most people silly... and the risk-free economy is sinking under its own weight.

There is, yes, consensus on the latter point. The words "Everyone knows what has to be done" were uttered to me no fewer than 10 times during the course of the week, by leading politicians of all four parties, newspaper editors, economists, and the inevitable taxi driver. "Everyone knows" the economy has to be reformed. The huge manufacturing combines that produce high-quality cars and other products remain brilliantly productive. But almost every other sector is suffering. The strict labour arrangements agreed to by, say, Volkswagen, have become the national norm, but they tend to cripple entrepreneurs trying to start new businesses (the rate of new business formation is among the worst in Europe). The unemployment rate stands at 8.5% - but there are at least another 8.5% who have given up trying to work and are receiving a relatively comfortable level of state support.

The cost of hiring new employees is prohibitive, especially for small employers. "There are about 10 million people working in the shadow economy, many of whom also receive social assistance," said Roland Berger, a management consultant in Munich. "The black market is growing at about 5% per year - it's the only sector of the Germany economy that actually is growing. So the number of people paying for the welfare state keeps diminishing compared to the number of people getting paid. And then there's the demographic problem every country has - low birth rates, longer lives. The system as it stands can't be sustained."

Of course, not everyone agrees to the medicine that "everyone knows" will work: a thinner welfare state, a less restrictive labour market, a more competitive economy. "I can not move until we get everyone in the boat," Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has told friends. But the unions will probably never get in the boat. His main opponent in the September 22 election, Edmund Stoiber, takes great pains to reassure people that he has no intention of moving toward "American-style" capitalism, either.

The inertia is stultifying, but not impermeable. Twenty years ago, my contemporaries, the greens, made a valiant run at the establishment; eventually they joined it (Joschka Fischer, a green leader, is the most popular politician in the country). Recently there have been signs that the children of the greens are growing impatient, too, but moving in a different direction from their parents - toward the neo-libertarian politics of the Free Democrat party (or yellows). These two groups, green and yellow, are far more interesting than the mummified middle. I'll talk to them this week.

Berlin

Youth first. Dinner with three young entrepreneurs, aged 31, 32 and 36, at a lovely Italian cafe in Charlottenburg. Each is wearing a suit and tie. Alex, handsome and voluble, is taking over the family office-furniture and interior-design business. He cuts to the chase. "The labour laws are impossible. We have 18 employees; this month, we'll add two more. But I just fired a woman who's been with us for six years. She made several big mistakes, but that wasn't really the problem. She just wasn't committed to the company. She does what she is told to do and nothing more. Look, we're on our way, we're ready to grow - ready to rock and roll - and we just can't afford to have anyone on the team who isn't totally committed. So now I have to go to court in four weeks to defend my right to fire her." (Ask any businessperson and you will be told that small but difficult decisions such as this are often the difference between success and failure; ask any European social democrat and you will be told that honouring the employee's "right" to a job is a price that business must pay to operate in a just society.)

Trosten, 36, runs a company that manages commercial office buildings. He is the rarest of entrepreneurs, a native of East Germany, and he has the most employees of anyone at the table: 60, 30 in Berlin and 30 in Frankfurt. He has a story about regulations. Every company in the real-estate business has to get a letter from the state certifying that it pays taxes and hires no illegal immigrants. This is reasonable enough, but there is more: every time Trosten's company does business with an outside contractor, it has to receive a copy of that company's certification letter. If it doesn't receive the copy, it is required to pay 15% of the bill to the state. "I have 200 suppliers," he said. "My accountant has to spend 10% of her time on this one law. Every transaction has to have copies of the appropriate certification."

There is much talk of silly regulations. Roland Berger had told me a regulatory joke: "Do you know why so few German companies start in garages like Hewlett-Packard did? Because it's illegal. There's a law that says every office must have a window - and another law that says garages are not allowed to have windows."

I've also heard businessmen say that if Bill Gates had been born German, he'd be middle-management at Siemens. "That's not true! That's not true!" said Frank, a self-employed management consultant. "You have to have a university degree to be middle-management at Siemens. Gates is a college dropout. They wouldn't allow him to be middle-management at Siemens."

When I ask them about politics, the entrepreneurs sigh and say that they'll vote for the nominally conservative Christian Democratic Union. "I wanted to vote yellow [for the Free Democrats]," Alex said, "but I can't now because of Möllemann."

"We can't encourage even the appearance of anti-semitism," said Frank.

Two days later, I had a cup of coffee with a high-ranking Free Democrat who asked to remain nameless. "What a nightmare!" he said, after I told him about the entrepreneurs. The Free Democrats, he explained, had the reputation of being the older, stingier partners of the Christian Democrats during the 16-year reign of Helmut Kohl; the party was dying of senility - it remains the oldest of the four main parties. But a decision was made in 1998 to recharge the batteries. The new party leader, Guido Westerwelle, is only 40; a glitzy advertising campaign has begun. (Example: a group of Indian men in turbans, working at computers, and the words: "They Think Germany is a Developing Country.") The style, as much as the neo-libertarian content - economic and personal freedom - appealed to young people. The Free Democrats doubled their strength in the polls from 6% to 12%. "We're hoping for 18%," said he who would be nameless. "That way we have the power. We are part of any coalition. We are headed that way, at least I hope we still are."

This talk of "power" was very un-German, and the FDP's very use of language is probably part of its appeal. "The culture is very strict about humility," said Frank, the young management consultant. "In school, if you said anything so mild as, 'This is my aim in life, this is what I want to achieve,' People would have thought that you were crazy and unsuitable."

Alex, the office furniture salesman, laughed and said: "That's right." He took a deep breath, puffed himself up and let fly, "But I want to have a really big company!"

If the most recklessly self-promotional of Germans can get only guilty pleasure from stating his life's goals, one wonders how Germany as a nation will ever be able to freely express its point of view on the international stage, in fact foreign policy and security issues were raised so infrequently as to be virtually absent in any of my conversations with German officials.

"We learned in school that we were responsible for the past," said Frank. Literally responsible. If you ever said, 'Hey, I'm just 15, I'm not responsible for anything,' you'd have some serious trouble on your hands. I think that's part of why we're so nervous about asserting ourselves."

Hanover

"I want to have power. I like being in power," said Claudia Roth, co-chair of the Green party, as we sat in her bright, militantly informal Berlin office. "I got into a lot of trouble when I said that a few weeks ago. 'How dare she! Power is bad, power is dangerous!' But you need power to change the world."

Roth had begun our conversation with a tribute to the Prince of Wales, who had recently visited Germany. "He's so green. He spoke about nature and biodiversity, genetic agriculture and nuclear power, and he was so clear, so intelligent. I was so impressed I want to propose him for honorary membership in the German Green party." She noticed that I was laughing. "No, really," she insisted.

If ever there was going to be an antidote to the stifling consensuality of Germany, it promised to be the greens - and look at them now: Prince Charles is their idea of a radical. The greens are the only significant party to have been formed since Germany became the federal republic, my baby-boomer generation's contribution to political discourse, and they did change things a bit. They popularised the notion of women's and human rights, and, of course, they brought the environment to centre stage. They were fanatic peaceniks at first, but that only served to reinforce the prevailing German unease with all things military.

Over time the party's establishment drift has caused an endless, garrulous marital spat between two factions: the fundis and the realos (names that recall the 60s split between realies and feelies). The realos have won. They became part of the government in 1998, when Gerhard Schröder formed his red-green coalition. They supported military action in Kosovo and Afghanistan (the fact that German troops are currently operating in Afghanistan, the first time the country's soldiers have been deployed outside Europe since the war, doesn't seem to be much of an issue to anyone in Germany) and they are making noises - safe, consensual noises - in favour of the sort of economic reforms "everyone knows" are needed. But, the fundis would argue, the realos lost, too: They lost their ideological purity - and the party is losing altitude in the polls, down from 12% to about 7%.

In Hanover last week, the greens celebrated the 20th anniversary of their arrival in the Lower Saxony Landtag (legislature). It was a wildly nostalgic evening. Jürgen Trittin, Germany's minister of the environment and a member of the greens' first legislative delegation in 1982, told the crowd gathered in a courtyard of the Landtag complex: "My first speech in the Landtag was to demand the expulsion of the leader of the parliament. It didn't pass."

The Hanover greens had been at the epicentre of the fight to prevent the storage of nuclear waste at Gorleben. I was introduced to an unprepossessing man with short white hair and a moustache, whose name was Rolf Grösch. "I was in the streets with Joschka Fischer in Frankfurt in 68," Grösch said. Fischer's street-fighting past is now famous in Germany. Grösch was also a leader of the Gorleben protests and another member of the greens' first Landtag delegation. "We all rotated out of the parliament after two years. That used to be party policy: one term and then out. I'm sorry we've abandoned it. My son, who is 20, thinks we're just another establishment party now."

Next, I was introduced to a realo-fundi mixed marriage: Doctor Thea Dückers (R) and Johannes Kempmann (F). Actually, Kempmann was formerly a fundi, a leader of the Gorleben anti-nuke protests. He is now a board member of an energy company. "I wanted to see," he said sheepishly, "if I could make a difference from the inside."

We sat on the back steps of the Lower Saxony parliament building, drinking beer, the setting sun in our eyes, talking about the strange lessons that experience teaches. "We were part of the local red-green parliamentary alliance," said Duckers, who is now a member of the Bundestag and a leading green economic expert. "But after we were turned out in 1994, my husband and I started a humanitarian agency and were working with the Kurds in northern Iraq. Every day, we saw the American jets fly over and we'd be so happy. Their presence allowed us to do our work. It was an important moment for us, a big change. We both began to understand the importance of military power. I voted for the military actions in Kosovo and Afghanistan in the Bundestag."

I asked Johannes about the young people going yellow. "We call them the spass generation," he said. "The fun generation. They like having new cars and big houses and fun drinks and clothes. They don't like to talk about politics, they like to talk about fun. The FDU is all about fun. That's not the green way. We can argue about politics all night."

"Are they rebelling against you?" I asked.

"What do you think? We had long hair and they have no hair. We were going to change the world and they - well, with the internet and the global economy and all these other things, they think the world is too complicated to change. So why not have fun?"

I suggested that our generation had been a burden on our children, "and it's only going to get worse as we retire and they have to pay for us".